Chocolate Cherry Coconut

I often get asked about my inspiration for cooking, where do I get my ideas to create a new recipe? This recipe came from the cherries at the fruit shop. Coming up to summer and Christmas is cherry time in Australia and they are one of the many stone fruits I look forward to.

There’s only one summer fruit that I don’t like. I’m not going to say which one it is, but you may notice that I’ll never post a recipe with that fruit in it. I’ll leave you to ponder which fruit it may be.

But cherries! Cherries I love.

I saw the cherries a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been thinking about what to make. And then it dawned on me. A chocolate, cherry and coconut slice. My idea was to use fresh cherries in the filling until I realised how difficult it would be to pip enough cherries. I started pipping them, but ate so many in the process that it really wasn’t going to work out. So I took the easy way out and used tin cherries instead.

Which means I still have piles of fresh cherries just to eat at random. Score!

The ganache is similar to what I use to make truffles, which you can find in my Desserts cookbook. It’s smooth and decadent and creamy and chocolate-y. There’s no shame in not making the full slice and just making the chocolate ganache. I’d even forgive you for eating it straight from the saucepan.

If you do make the whole slice, maybe you’ll need to make extra ganache just in case you keep trying it out before you even put it on top of the cherry layer. It’s seriously that good!